Good morning!

I haven't been doing much running this week, for a reason directly related to losing my shoe last week (but not directly related to losing that sock at Payless- I still have about 50 other pairs of socks!).

Since I don't have my normal motion control Brooks shoes, I had to wear a pair of some of my mom's old sneakers. They didn't fit her because they were too small- but they do fit me. The only problem though is that they are not motion control. I always wear motion control shoes because of my flat, overpronating feet. Without motion control shoes, my flat feet flop all over the place, and tend to get injured.

Such an injury happened this Monday while I was going for a quick 45 minute jog around my neighborhood. My feet were flopping all over the place, and felt a little sore when I returned home, but I didn't really think much about it until the next day (Tuesday).

On Tuesday, I woke up and felt a dull ache in my foot. This ache was on a bone on the side of my right foot. It wasn't extremely painful, but I felt this ache every time I took a step. This dull ache didn't go away on Wednesday- and it stayed with me the entire rest of the week. This is even though I didn't run a single step after Monday (for fear of making the injury worse).

My foot hasn't been feeling much better- but the injury hasn't gotten worse either. I hope my foot feels better so that I can go running tomorrow. I'm going to be extra careful though until my new pair of shoes that I ordered online (the same model I was wearing, just a different color) arrives in the mail. I don't want to hurt myself again!

Despite not being able to do much running, I have still been able to get in some pretty good workouts this week. Some of my swim practices have been killer!

An example of this is my high school practices. I go to my high school practices every Sunday (which means I have a practice with them today!). A lot of the sets we have been doing have killer (at least for me!) intervals. Try swimming 4 X 200 on 3:30, 10 X 50 on 45, and a couple fast 500s (all in the same practice!) and see how you feel!

I also have been having tough practices with my club team. One of such practices was 5 X 100 sprint. By the second 100, I felt really nauseous and out of breath- and I still had to do 3 more! You can imagine how the next three felt! I could barely move at the end of that killer practice!

Although these practices have been really tough, they have really been helping my fitness. An example of this is the meet I swam in yesterday.

In yesterday's meet, I swam the 500 free, and two relays. In one relay, I swam a 50 free. In another relay, I swam a 100 free.

The 500 free was my very first event. The weird thing about this 500 was that it didn't feel as hard swimming at maximum speed as it normally does. I wasn't dead tired, yet I was still working pretty much at maximum heart rate. I thought my time would be really slow, since it didn't feel like I was working that hard; however, I ended up getting a 2 second PR! I couldn't believe it!

I am also recovering a lot better between hard efforts. My coach was kind of evil, and put me in a relay that came pretty much right after my 500. I only had maybe 10 minutes rest. The lucky thing about this relay, however, was that it was only a 50- meaning I would only have to complete one lap (as opposed to 10!).

Despite this lack of recovery time, instead of being dead for the 50, I was able to put out a pretty good amount of speed. I was also able to put out a good amount of speed for my 100 relay about half an hour later. I could have even swum another event if I was forced to!

I had no idea speed work would help so much. Last night was the best I ever physically felt at a meet. I was still pretty tired, but I wasn't dead and exhausted like I normally am.

I thought I could do absolutely nothing else to improve my swimming. I thought that I have reached my potential and should move on. I guess that is not the case. Although I was probably still last in all or most of my events, and didn't take off very much time, it is great to know that I can still get in better shape for swimming. I will definitely appreciate all the speed stuff we have been doing at swim practice a whole lot more now!

This speed work idea will be great for my running also (once I build up a good base of fitness!).